


Blue Summer Sky

by lilactreesinwinter



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, New England, Summer, Tour Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 00:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15352209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilactreesinwinter/pseuds/lilactreesinwinter
Summary: Dan takes Phil on a brief adventure in New England during their tour in America.Excerpt:Phil’s dream drifted from tobacco leaves to apple trees, grown side-by-side with coconut palms. Snow cherries were cold in his nostrils, and the ocean pounded on a hot beach covered with purple lilacs and purpler grapes.Note:Yeah, this is a love letter to New England as well as to Dan and Phil. I don’t know that they will actually go where I send them, but I’m sure they would enjoy it if they did!





	Blue Summer Sky

July was hot and sticky just about everywhere in America, Phil had learned, and this little state with the funny name was no exception. He had gone out to the coffee chain with the delicious donuts (some still red-white-and-blue themed, though the Fourth of July had passed), and it felt as though he had immediately been slapped with a wet towel. That moisture was now dripping behind his knees, leaving cool trails down his calves as it was chilled by the blessed blasts of the very American air conditioning in the hotel lobby.

He looked around for Dan and saw him stood in front of the display holding leaflets advertising local attractions. Phil came up behind him and pressed the takeaway cup of iced coffee against Dan's arm, while snugging his knee behind Dan's (non-sweaty) knee for a fraction of a moment.

Phil was gratified by Dan's yelped response to one or both of these ministrations, and he handed off the coffee so he could pull out his donut and briefly contemplate what was particularly “Boston” about the cream under the chocolate icing.

They were several weeks into the American leg of their world tour and restless with the routine of their days. They had promised themselves that the next time they stopped in a brand-new location in this vast country, they would leave their hotel room, ditch their entourage, and do something different in the few hours before yet another Meet & Greet. So here they were in this unremarkable-looking city in the state with the funny name (“Not 'connect'--it's pronounced Kin-neddi-kit!”) searching for something to do.

“Well, Phil, Mark Twain is an option. He lived here in a house he built to look like a Mississippi riverboat.”

“Hm.” Phil's eye was drawn to a leaflet about a whaling museum. He was wiping his fingers on his shorts in order to pluck it out of the rack when Dan shoved him aside.

“Nope! I know exactly where we're going. And it's a surprise,” said Dan, tucking a pamphlet into his pocket.

“You sure?” Phil found he was reluctant to let go of the idea of whales, though he supposed a whaling ship might get him seasick.

“I'm sure you'll think it's the best thing you've ever seen in America! Go get ready while I arrange a car.”

“Does this surprise require sun cream?”

Dan grinned. “Not at all.”

Half an hour later, Phil climbed into the back of a car driven by a young man named Rodney, who was apparently a graduate student in American history, making money as a bit of a tour guide on the side.

After a brief drive through the city, they were on a highway zipping north. Phil looked out the window to keep any carsickness at bay. He could see the oppressive heat of the bright sunlight and the thick humidity in the hazy air. It was very green and almost lush—a bit like England, but hotter. And with more trees.

“How far are we going?” he asked.

“Oh, just to the next state,” Dan said airily, not bothering to look up from his phone.

“Not far, really,” chimed in Rodney. “We're just driving up the Connecticut River.”

“What sort of name is that, anyway?” Phil thought someone studying history should know the answer to that one.

“It's an Algonquin—Native American—name. It basically means big long river. It starts up at the Canadian border and flows all the way down through New England.”

“Hmmm,” said Phil. He tipped his head back against the window and stretched out his leg to hook his foot around Dan's ankle. The car vibrated gently against his skull, the A/C blew blissfully across his skin, and Dan's toes were working into his arch. Phil fell asleep to the murmur of Rodney's eager response to Dan's question about the barns with louvered sides and the fields shielded by nets that could be seen out the window. Apparently those were farms growing tobacco to wrap fancy cigars. Phil felt he must be dreaming by now, because surely tobacco growing wasn't something that happened in New England.

Phil's dream drifted from tobacco leaves to apple trees, grown side-by-side with coconut palms. Snow cherries were cold in his nostrils, and the ocean pounded on a hot beach covered with purple lilacs and purpler grapes.

Rodney seemed to still be lecturing on Native Americans over the sound of the waves and the scent of poached pears and clean cotton.

“The settlement of Deerfield was raided in 1704 by a group of Native Americans and French soldiers, and more than 100 captives were taken to Canada. Western Massachusetts was the American frontier then—that's why this is called the Pioneer Valley.”

The car seemed to be slowing down and pulling off the highway. Phil shifted to stretch his legs and rub his eyes under his glasses. He wasn't sure why he could now smell cranberries and pumpkins with undertones of leather, though he was ready to believe they were scents left behind by long-ago settlers, which would make as much sense as anything by this point.

“Don't look out the window, Phil. We're almost there.”

Phil smiled and obediently kept his eyes down as Rodney miraculously found a shady spot in the crowded car park. Once he parked, he opened a biography of Emily Dickinson and cranked Phish up on the sound system.

Phil followed Dan like a duckling through the car park, along an olfactory gradient now redolent of jasmine and chocolate cake. He kept his eyes on the broad back in front of him while navigating around solidly-built American tourists and barely avoiding tripping over sugared-up toddlers.

“Are we at a fair?” he wondered. “Or a festival?” Perhaps an outdoor venue with many booths would explain the cacophony of smells.

“No, Phil. Look!” Dan ushered him grandly through some ordinary-looking mega-store doors.

Phil couldn't smell anything anymore, or maybe his brain had just overloaded on the smell of everything—anything that could be put into a candle and burned.

“Welcome to Yankee Candle!” exclaimed a cheerful woman as she extended a map toward Phil.

“What? Where?” he asked as his fingers closed automatically around the paper.

“The 'Scenter of the Universe',” she continued. As Phil still looked confused, she pointed to a sign that spelled out the pun. Behind her stretched room upon room, filled with Yankee Candles of all sizes, colours, and scents.

Dan nudged Phil, his dimples showing. “You like it, yeah?”

Phil liked it. Phil rolled a trolley into a cavernous hall down which stretched rows displaying literally thousands of votive candles in literally hundreds of scents, piled like produce at a farmer's market (one scent was, of course, Farmer's Market). Phil picked up a plastic tray (well, several) with depressions meant to hold a dozen candles, snug as eggs. He put a Rainbow Cookie candle next to a Buttercream one, and paired a Balsam & Clove with a Shimmering Pine. One corner contained both Autumn Bouquet and Autumn Leaves, and there was a whole row of Sugared Pumpkin Swirl, Apple Pumpkin, Pumpkin Ginger Bark, and Moonbeams on Pumpkins.

After dropping a Black Sand Beach and an Enchanted Moon into Phil's candle box, Dan wandered off to explore the rest of the complex. Phil found him some time later (“Those four dozen candles are going in your luggage, Phil”), in a hall where it was perpetual Christmas—dark and cold and European, just the opposite of the bright, hot America outside. Trees were wrapped with lights and ornaments cascaded down the branches into display bins for sale.

“This is a bit odd for a candle store,” Phil observed.

“Don't get any Christmas decorating ideas, mate. This is a candle-only adventure.”

As Dan spoke, artificial snow drifted from the ceiling over Christmas trees and summer tourists alike. He pulled his phone out, but the flurry had already stopped. He shook his head—he hadn't really planned to publicly document their private little trip. Phil had managed to post a typically hyperbolic comparison of Canadian and American donuts before he had eaten the latter, so they were good for the day on social media. But Dan had noticed the time.

“We have to go. There's just one thing I want to show you first. Do you still have those Canadian coins? I found a place to put them.”

Phil had managed to collect a small handful of loonies and small change which he had yet to take out of his pocket.

“Yeah.”

“Come with me then.”

Phil obediently followed Dan once more, into another dark corner, where there was an unassuming little bridge over some murky water.

“Look down,” Dan murmured.

Phil saw a flash of orange, and a pair of koi emerged from under the bridge.

“You can have a koi pond even in the middle of a room with no sunlight. Maybe that's a way we could do it.”

Phil caught Dan's eye and smiled softly. “Yeah,” he agreed.

He scattered the coins gently into the water, but he didn't really need to make a wish.

 

The sun was mellowing into golden afternoon, with a scattering of perfect white clouds overhead, as they made it out to Rodney and the car, ready to rejoin their world tour, meet their fans, put on their show. Phil lugged the carrier bag packed with four dozen candles, plus a few extra that had somehow made their way into his trolley. The bag ripped as they worked to wedge their long legs into the back of the car, and a candle that would remind them of this day rolled across the pavement: Blue Summer Sky.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on Tumblr.](https://phinalphantasy7.tumblr.com/)  
>     
> You might need a nose as sensitive as Phil's to distinguish so many scents at a distance, but if you ever drive past Yankee Candle your nose will know it!


End file.
